


The Winding Road

by Setcheti



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, April Showers 2015, M/M, Not Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-22
Updated: 2015-04-22
Packaged: 2018-03-25 04:55:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3797506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Setcheti/pseuds/Setcheti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two demon hunters walk into a bar...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Winding Road

**Author's Note:**

> This story is an example of Fun with Time and Space (i.e., Timelines? We don’t need no stinkin’ timelines!) Takes place during Xander’s road trip on BtVS and about three months after the first Trickster episode. I really, _really_ love the Trickster. Canon, not so much. ;)

Dean Winchester took a long pull off his beer and didn’t quite sigh.  He’d been hitting bar after bar in this little backwater California town for three nights running, and he still hadn’t caught the damned vampire whose antics had drawn him here.  His brother Sam had taken off with their uncle a week ago, and while Dean had been glad to see the back of him for a while – they really had been getting on each other’s nerves a lot lately – he was finding that he’d gotten used to not working alone.

Not that the barhopping would have been much fun with Sam along, of course; the younger Winchester brother had a giant stick up his ass sometimes, from Dean’s perspective.  He loved his brother, but sheesh!  A guy had to live a little, especially in their line of work.  You went nuts otherwise.

Dean took a longer pull to drown the thought that Sam was waaay too much like their dad in that respect.  He didn’t want to think about their dad tonight.

He was trying to catch the bartender’s eye to get another tallboy when the door behind the bar swung open and a dark-haired man came through carrying a gray plastic tub.  Dean watched him gather up the dirty glasses from behind the bar, idly appreciating.  The guy was easily prettier than any of the few barflies who were hanging around, although it was a masculine pretty not a feminine pretty in spite of the curling tendrils of dark hair and the long, dark lashes over oak-dark eyes…

Those eyes glanced up, and caught Dean looking.  The guy smiled.  Dean smiled back.

Geesh he needed to get laid – yet another thing that was difficult to accomplish with Sam around.  The dishwasher glanced at him again from under those long, dark lashes before ducking back into the kitchen with a grin, and Dean drowned his own grin in his beer.  Sam _wasn’t_ around…

Fifteen minutes later he wasn’t nearly so happy about that; if Sam had been there, Dean could have sent him out after the vamp.  Who had of course showed up and then inexplicably ducked out just when the dishwasher had reappeared and caught Dean’s eye again.

Dean toyed with the idea of working out his frustration by playing with the vamp before killing it – unkilling it, rekilling it, whatever – since now that he’d left the bar he couldn’t really go back in any time soon without looking suspicious.  It would be dangerous, especially since he was minus backup at the moment, but he would really like to make the bloodsucking bastard pay for fucking up his night…

He rounded the corner, coming into the dank alley behind the bar…and froze.  The dishwasher was standing there, glaring at the vampire.  “Why can’t you shit-for-brains bloodsuckers stay at the Hellmouth, or at least keep a low profile instead of running around like bad B-movie monsters?  You could have just walked away,” the dark haired man was saying, gesturing with something that was clutched in his hand.  He didn’t sound afraid.  “Not that I think you’re going to listen to reason or anything.”

The vampire, already in gameface, snarled…and attacked.  Dean could have sworn that the dishwasher rolled his eyes before pivoting to avoid the bloodsucker’s rush, stunning it with a hard right cross and then stabbing it with whatever he’d been holding.  The vampire gasped and collapsed into dust.  And then the man saw Dean.

It took Dean a moment to realize that the guy’s stunned expression might have more to do with the stake he was still holding ready than with being spotted in an alley dusting a vampire.  He quickly tucked the stake back into his jacket and tried to find something to say.  “Uh…looks like you got to him before me.”  The guy’s eyes narrowed, and Dean held up placating hands.  “Hey, no problem with that, there’s plenty of the damn things to go around.  What…”

“Chopsticks,” the man said, holding them up before tossing them into the shadows.  The grin Dean had seen inside made a reappearance.  “So you were following the vamp not me?”

“Uh, yeah.”  Dean moved closer.  “I guess introductions are in order.  I’m Dean.”

“Alex.”  He held out a hand, and Dean was surprised by the strength in his grip.  “You do this,” he gestured to where the vampire had been, “often?”

“Yeah.”  Dean cocked his head.  “You?”

“I’ve been trying to quit.”  Alex shrugged, running a hand through his dark hair.  “It’s not going so well.  Maybe I should have taken up smoking instead.”

Dean laughed.  “I say that all the time,” he told the other man.  A crash sounded from inside the bar, and both of them looked toward the door.  “You…need to go back in there?”

“Nah.  I told the boss I was taking a break.”  Alex sat down on a trashcan and just looked at him.  “You have someplace you need to be?”

“I think I’m done for the night,” Dean told him, finding a stack of crates to perch on.  “I’ve been on the fangboy’s trail for a while, now that he’s blowing in the wind I’m on vacation – until the next monster turns up.”

“They tend to do that.”

“Yeah, they do.”  Dean started to fidget, then stopped himself.  He was cool.  He was not Sam, and he wasn’t a girl either.  Of course, he also wasn’t above…he looked up from under his own dark lashes.  “So…what time do you get off?”

“Supposed to be midnight.”  Alex started to smile, returning the look and making the not-Sam not-girl flirty thing they had going on mutual.  “But if someone were, I don’t know, waiting for me…I could probably get out of here a little earlier.  It’s pretty dead tonight.”

“Someone could probably wait inside and have another beer,” Dean said, nodding.  “Some things are worth waiting for.”

Had the other guy just blushed?  Dean couldn’t be sure, but he thought so.  “Maybe the same sort of things that are worth leaving early for,” Alex replied, and stood up.  Dean stood up too, and that somehow put them practically right in each other’s personal space.  “Maybe we should make sure?”

Dean met him halfway, and neither one of them minded that they each used their mindblowing, proving-the-worth-of-waiting-for kiss to surreptitiously push a crucifix against the other man’s bare skin.  You couldn’t be too careful, after all.

 

Years of hunting had given Dean a sixth sense about supernatural beings – even in his sleep.  He woke up all at once knowing he was being watched, and wondering if he was going to be able to do anything about it seeing as how it had caught him naked in bed in a hotel room.  A quick glance showed him that Alex’s sixth sense had been effectively neutralized by post-coital exhaustion, and Dean spared a second to feel smug about that.  At least if he died tonight, he’d go out on top.

There was a chuckle from beside the bed, and he froze.  “Relax,” a familiar, amused voice said.  “If I was planning to kill you, I would have done it three months ago.”

Dean turned his head.  The Trickster was sitting not two feet away in a plush padded chair that definitely didn’t go with the fleabag room they were in.  Dean wasn’t quite relieved.  “I kind of thought that was too easy.”

The other man shrugged.  “It’s not that easy to kill a god, kid.  I’m not pissed off about you trying, though – I’d have been disappointed if you hadn’t, in fact.  I tested you, you passed.”  He lounged back in the chair.  “Congrats.”

“Uh, thanks.”  Dean scooted upright, moving slowly.  “Tested?”

“Yeah.  It’s in my job description – making sure the good guys are actually good.”  He grinned.  “The rest of the time I just…amuse myself.”

Dean had to grin back.  “I thought the alien thing was great, really fitting.”

The Trickster chuckled.  “Thanks.  But unfortunately, I’m not here to take bows for my technique.”  He gestured to the still-sleeping man beside Dean.  “Although yours isn’t too shabby either.  This is the best night Alex has had in years.”

“You know…”

“Yeah, I know him really well.  But he doesn’t know me, I’ve been careful about that.”  The god sighed.  “Alex is what I’m here to talk to you about, Dean.”

Dean’s eyes went wide.  “Is this about…”

Another chuckle.  “No.  Like I said, your technique doesn’t leave much to be desired.  I’m not one of those dads who thinks their kid is never going to have sex.”  He smiled when Dean’s eyes got even wider.  “Yeah, I’m Alex’s father.  He doesn’t know – and he’s not going to be waking up for this discussion, this is between me and you.”

So much for Dean’s post-coital exhaustion theory.  “And it’s not about me and him?”

“Sort of.  Kind of…yeah, okay, it is.  But there’s more to it than that.”  The Trickster gave another wave of his hand and a small table appeared containing a plate of cookies.  He took one and ate it, inviting Dean to help himself with a gesture.  “My kind gets around.  A lot.  We like people,” he explained.  “About nineteen years ago I was having some fun with a pack of bastards in L.A. when I ran into this pretty little thing down by the beach, absolutely bawling her eyes out.  So I’m kind of worked up from running the bastards, and I figure why not?  Someone made her cry, I’ll make her smile – then I’ll find him and make _him_ cry, and that’ll make _me_ smile, right?  So I get her to talking, get the waterworks turned off, and then whisk her off to my place for some ice cream and grownup fun.  Planted my little seed while she was asleep; all she wanted was a baby, and that shit she’d married had been going on like it was her fault they didn’t have one even though he’d had himself taken out of the gene contribution pool before he ever met her.”

Dean nodded, scowling; he knew guys who’d done that, gotten clipped so they wouldn’t have to be careful, and most of them were irresponsible shits.  “You made it look like his knot had come untied, huh?”

“Got it in one – they don’t, you know.  Every time you hear someone say it ‘didn’t take’?  There’s someone like me standing behind him laughing their ass off.”  He took another cookie.  “I changed Jessie’s memory so she thought she’d spent the afternoon eating ice cream with an old beachcomber, sort of a grandfatherly Mr. Rogers type, and then I made sure her husband felt a little randy for the next week or so.  And _then_ I gave him a little swelling to worry about and he  hightailed it down to the doctor, who told him his knot wasn’t fully tied and that he’d better wear a condom if he didn’t want to be a daddy.”  The Trickster’s hazel eyes twinkled.  “Too late!  Nine months later, the bastard never doubted it was his kid.  He had himself snipped again, but Jessie had what she wanted and he settled into fatherhood pretty well, so I went on my merry way.” 

He made a face.  “I kept tabs on them, of course – Alex is mine, after all – but I wasn’t there when the shit decided to take advantage of the ridiculously low property values and move them to Sunnydale.”  He saw Dean wince, and he nodded.  “Yeah, exactly.  I couldn’t fault the guy’s limited logic, as far as it went; nice house cheap, good paying job, good school for Alex.  Fucking Happy Dreamland…if you ignore fifteen cemeteries and reports of gangs and wild animals killing people left and right, that is.”

“Dad always told me not to go there, not even to go near there, no matter what I heard about,” Dean said.  “He said Sunnydale was sitting on a Hellgate.”

“A Hellmouth,” the Trickster corrected.  “And yeah, it is.  I don’t go there either, most of us don’t.  It…does things to supernatural beings, twists them, warps them.  Screws up some humans pretty badly too.”

Dean winced again at the look on his face.  “Alex’s dad?”

“Yeah.  Jessie too, eventually.”  He appeared on the other side of the bed in a blink, one hand stroking Alex’s dark curls with a father’s proprietary affection.  “He takes after her, you know.  The hair, those chocolate eyes that reflect such a bright, happy soul…”  Another blink and he was back in the chair, and there were two bottles of beer with the cookies.  “Not so much of a resemblance now, I’m afraid.  Jessie’s spark went out years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thanks, but I wasn’t in love with her.”  Dean nodded, understanding that; he knew Sam wouldn’t have, but Sam was a lot clueless about the way the world went around and the stick up his ass sometimes reached his brain.  “She carried my child, though, so I feel a certain responsibility.  And it was just a waste.”

Dean nodded again, taking a pull off his beer.  “Are you going to tell him?  Alex, I mean?”

“I don’t know.”  The Trickster shrugged.  “I might.  Although that’s not why I’m here, at any rate.  Jessie can’t be saved, and I wouldn’t try to help Tony if he was on fire and I needed to piss.  My son, though, that’s a different story, and I’m gonna need some help – which is where you come in, Dean.  You’re drawn to him, he’s drawn to you…and I need for him not to go running back to that bitch Slayer and her entourage in Sunnydale.  But Alex is loyal and he’s got a white knight complex a mile wide, he _will_ go back…unless he thinks he’ll be doing more good somewhere else.  _With_ someone else.”

The young hunter almost dropped his beer.  “You want him to…”

“They call him the Zeppo.”  There was a gleam in those hazel eyes, a spark of something that Dean was very glad wasn’t burning for him personally.  “It means zero, nothing.  He’s saved the Slayer’s life at least twice; she thanked him by using him to make her boyfriend jealous and then giving him that nickname.  He risks his life to fight alongside these people, it’s almost killed him more than once and it’s fucked up his life beyond belief, but they treat him with contempt you wouldn’t show a used car salesman.  They know he’s a ‘demon magnet’ – part of his legacy from my side of the family – but they push him out of their circle and then hold him responsible for the resulting clusterfuck.” 

The Trickster’s hand was white-knuckled around the bottle, Dean noticed, and as he looked it became a bottle of Scotch.  Again, he got it.  “And you can’t go in there and do your thing, because it’s the Hellmouth.  So the bitch just gets away with it.”  He took a chance.  “Like Tony did.”

“Yeah, like that.”  The Trickster held up the bottle.  “Want some?”

“No thanks, I’m good.”  Dean returned the gesture with his beer.  “I get why you don’t want him going back to Sunnydale – hell, now I don’t want him going back to Sunnydale either.  And you’re right, I felt something the minute I saw him, and I saw it in his eyes too.  But…”

“I don’t like buts.”

Dean ignored that.  “Sam.  That dark...thing inside of him.  And that demon that hunts down Winchesters and pins their significant others to the ceiling, too.  I could end up being more dangerous for Alex than the Hellmouth is.”

The Trickster thought about that, and the Scotch turned back into a beer.  “Not more dangerous than the Hellmouth,” he said finally.  “Alex can handle Sam, and his ‘dark thing’ – he’ll sense it right off, he’ll probably end up warning _you_ about it.  And I can take care of the Winchester curse, at least where my son is concerned.”  He raised an eyebrow.  “I take it nobody explained to you how that actually works, huh?  You do know the demon only shows up with fire if the fruit of your loins is baking in somebody’s oven – and that fruit has to be female.”

“Sam’s girlfriend was…oh shit.”  Dean took another pull off his beer, running his free hand through his hair.  “Well, that explains a hell of a lot.”

“I’m sure it does.  I wouldn’t be too upset with your brother, though.  I think it was more your father he was trying to keep it from than you.”

“Yeah, most likely.”  Dean sat there a moment, thinking, and then he shook himself.  “I don’t want him to go back to Sunnydale.  But what if he doesn’t want to come with me?  I just met him a few hours ago…”

“If you really want him to come, he’ll come,” the Trickster told him.  “White knight complex, remember?  The Slayer kept telling him he’s worthless because he’s ‘just’ human, way to poke holes in his armor.  But you…”  He leaned forward.  “You – and the rest of your family, too – aren’t anything but human either.  That’s going to mean something to him.  And you asking him to throw in with you, to join the hunt, is going to mean even more.  He needs to hear that you need him, and you do.”  A proud grin appeared.  “After all, how many guys can kill a vampire with a pair of disposable chopsticks?”

 

Dean woke up the second time several hours past dawn, and lay in bed smiling up at the ceiling.  Alex was curled around him, warm and heavy, and he idly played his fingers through dark, soft curls while he thought about the night before.  Dead vamp, great sex, approving divine father-in-law.  He glanced over, saw the plate of cookies on the nightstand and grinned.  It had been a good night, all the way around.

And if he could convince Alex to come with him, they were going to have a lot more of them.  _If_ he could convince Alex.   Dean thought he could.  Alex wanted to fight evil, he wanted to save people, Dean could give him that.  Alex needed to feel useful and appreciated; Dean could give him that too.  And Alex, like Dean, needed not to be alone.  That one they could give each other.

Dean rolled over and set about waking his lover – soon to be partner – up with a kiss.

                 

In the end, Dean told Alex about the Trickster showing up in the middle of the night, about the conversation they’d had, and about how much the godly guy liked sweets.  Then they finished the cookies and Alex told him about Sunnydale, about the Slayer and his other friends, and about how much of the clusterfuck part of things he thought was his own fault.  Dean informed him that he didn’t sleep with fuck-ups and then set about proving it, and after another post-coital nap he told Alex – also, he’d found out, known as Xander – about his own family and the other human hunters who were out there keeping the general population safe from monsters.

And then he invited Alex to join them.  “Your friends say they don’t need you, that you’re a liability,” he countered the other man’s objections.  “And hey, they’ve got magic and a Watcher and pet vamps – oh my!  All they’re gonna be able to use you for is bait, man, and that is just a waste.  Because you could really help me and Sammy out here in the non-Hellmouth zone.”

Alex thought about that for a minute and then rolled over, pinning Dean underneath him.  “And who do you and Sam use as bait, hmm?”

“Sammy, always.”  Alex laughed and kissed him.  Dean rolled them over again so that he was on top and pulled out of the kiss, grinning.  “Okay, it’s usually kind of a spur of the moment deal, you know, like the last five seconds and you have to come up with a new plan sort of thing.  It’s whichever of us gets there first.”  This time he kissed Alex.  “Feel free to join in the fight over who gets to do something suicidally stupid and heroic.  Sometimes you’ll win and sometimes you’ll lose, just don’t hit Sammy over the head because it makes him pissy later on and he will _not_ shut up about it.”

“No hitting your pissy younger brother over the head, check.”  Alex ran his fingers through Dean’s short hair and across the back of his neck.  “How’s he going to feel about you adding me to the party without asking him?”

“It’s my party – my car, my connections, my fake ID’s – so I don’t really give a shit what he thinks.”  Dean gave a wiggle that made Alex catch his breath.  “Besides, he’s gonna go into shock from finding out I swing both ways first.  He’ll be brooding in the back seat for at least the first twenty miles.”  He went back in close and used his tongue to trace the line of his new partner’s strong jaw.  “You don’t need to worry about Sam, Alex.  He’ll give you the third degree once he calms down, and I guarantee you that in a couple of weeks he’ll be used to you and you’ll just be another member of the family.”

“As long as he doesn’t call Sunnydale for a reference we’ll be okay.”  Alex moaned when Dean reached his ear and switched from licking to sucking.  “Oh god, I will only give you the rest of my life to stop doing that.”

“Mmm, deal.”  Neither one of them was quite ready for another round just yet, but playing for playing’s sake was good too.  Dean worked his way around to the other ear and then back down until they were kissing again.  That kept everyone’s mouth busy for a while, but when they finally came up for air Dean had a question ready.  “What’ll happen if someone _does_ call  Sunnydale?”

“I’m afraid to find out,” Alex murmured.  “And to tell the truth, I’d rather not.  At best they’d be pissed off and I’d just get treated to a lot of commentary about how stupid and helpless I am over the phone, at worst…they’d come after me to drag me back ‘for my own good’, and it wouldn’t be pretty.”  One brown eye opened, then the other, and there was concern in both.  The pliant body under Dean’s started to tense.  “I don’t want to put you or your brother in danger.  Maybe I’d better…”

“Not finish that sentence,” Dean told him, and kissed the end of his nose.  He framed the other man’s face with his hands.  “No one is going to call up the Hellmouth, believe me - no hunter in their right mind goes near that place.”  Another kiss.  “They don’t need you, we do.  They don’t appreciate you, I’ll never stop.  And they want to use you…I want to love you.”  This kiss went on the shocked round ‘o’ of the mouth below his, tender and full of feeling.  “I know we just met, but…you’re special, Alex.  I knew that last night, _before_ I met your dad.  And I promise never to take you for granted, not ever.  Stay with me?”

Alex’s reply didn’t require words, and both men were so involved with it that they didn’t notice when the plate of cookies disappeared and a small, very decadently chocolate wedding cake appeared in its place.

 

By the end of the summer, even if any of the old ‘gang’ from Sunnydale had gone looking for their friend, they wouldn’t have found him.  Because they wouldn’t have thought to look for 21-year-old Alex Winchester, which was the name the 19-year-old formerly known as Xander Harris had found on his drivers license the morning after…well, just the morning after, although it had probably been more like afternoon by the time he and Dean had finally made it out of bed that day.  He’d also found an impressive collection of impeccable fake ID’s to match Dean’s, and a credit card that wasn’t actually real but somehow worked anyway and didn’t leave any sort of paper trail behind.

Alex and Dean knew they’d have to tell Sam about the credit card sooner or later, but they weren’t in any hurry just yet.  Because every night Sam thought they were out hustling to make traveling money was another night the two lovers could spend doing…other things.  Better things.  Things that they couldn’t and wouldn’t do in front of Sam, and that made the younger Winchester brother uncomfortable if they blatantly announced their intention to go find another place to do them in.

Not that Sam had a problem with his brother having a male lover, or with that lover being Alex; he just didn’t want to watch them have sex, and since they usually all shared a room for safety’s sake the idea of the two of them having to leave that room to be together made him feel guilty.  And a guilty Sam was a brooding Sam, which pretty much sucked for everyone. 

Not to mention that Sam and Dean normally told curious hotel managers that Alex was their cousin to avoid arousing anyone’s homophobic ire.  Which translated into Alex and Dean sharing a bed but not doing anything more than cuddling in front of Sam, avoiding PDA’s everywhere else, and channeling any residual sexual frustration caused by their necessary self-control into killing monsters.  The monsters suffered for it – greatly.  Which was no bad thing, by most people’s standards and even by some monsters’ standards.  Because peaceable demons and self-controlled werewolves had no more love for their bloodthirsty, out of control brethren than anyone else did.

As for the Winchesters, they stayed out of Southern California.  Alex’s godly father popped in occasionally when ‘his boys’ didn’t have Sam with them, to share desserts and have a few beers while they talked about what they’d done and what they were planning to do.  Sometimes he even gave them advice, or pointed them in the right direction to find the answer to a difficult problem.  Alex and Dean knew that eventually they’d have to tell Sam about the Trickster too; but, like the credit card secret, they were waiting for the right time to bring it up.  Preferably right before they left Sam somewhere else to brood for a while, because he _really_ didn’t like it when Alex called him  Deadboy Lite.

And the Trickster himself…he was pleased.  _More_ than pleased.   He not only had his son off the Hellmouth and away from the Slayer, he had the boy happy and settled with a lover who took good care of him.  And in accomplishing that he’d short-circuited three nasty prophecies and given a godly finger to the so-called Powers That Be for mucking around with the Hellmouth in general and his son in particular.  Because the Trickster knew _exactly_ why Tony Harris had suddenly decided to change jobs and move to  Sunnydale all those years ago, and it hadn’t had nearly as much to do with the grass being greener as he’d led Dean and Alex to believe.  Tony had just been the pawn guarding the piece the Powers had really wanted control of: The White Knight.


End file.
